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There is also question of externalities. Building roads is not without hidden costs. Splitting communities in cities, making distances to travel longer because

There is also question of externalities. Building roads is not without hidden costs. Splitting communities in cities, making distances to travel longer because adding places for streets and parking places spreads infrastructure, air pollution killing people, lack of movement killing people, noise pollution, ugliness etc. I really like Dutch approach. Take away some space from cars in order to build biking infrastructure. I live second year in Netherlands and I love it.

User23 8y ago
That works great in countries one can bike across in a day. It’s not really a solution for American commuters. People mainly choose long commutes for housing affordability. When workers can’t afford to live within biking distance of work, then it’s not a viable solution.
- mklingen 8y ago
  > When workers can’t afford to live within biking distance of work, then it’s not a viable solution. This is a catch 22 because the way our cities are designed in America makes them unaffordable. American zoning in most cities prohibits the kind of dense mixed use development that makes low cost housing near work possible. We need to reform the zoning code in most cities and improve bike safety, walkability and public transportation to make headway.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    Lack of mid-distance transit is also a huge problem. Mid-sized USA cities tend to have half decent transit around their urban core (often woefully under-served especially in cities that don't have either trains/subways or else dedicated right-of-way for buses, but none-the-less serviceable). However, the thing that mid-sized cities almost uniformly lack in the US is any form of regional commuter rail.
    - sulam 8y ago
      We have regional commute rail in the SF Bay Area and in the NYC Metropolitan Region. It doesn't seem to have done much except drive up housing prices near rail stations and create silliness like 5-yr waiting lists for parking at them. It seems clear that commuter rail is not a silver bullet. Housing density is probably what we really need.
      - throwawayjava 8y ago
        Counter-anecdotes: in Chicago (e.g., UP-N), Boston (e.g., Fitchburg), and much of Europe (e.g., many major cities in Germany), the commuter rail systems do take you out into very affordable areas.
      - llampx 8y ago
        I used to commute into SF from Redwood City with the Caltrain. If I couldn't have taken a bike with me on the train, it would have been impossible because the last mile at both ends was completely undoable with local buses.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        It's both. Rail lets you be more flexible about where to put that density.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    I can easily see that it would improve my quality of life a lot if there were a bunch of customer-facing businesses interspersed with housing in a dense city block. I would love to be able to take a quick five minute walk to grab that random tool I need or that last ingredient I need for a recipe; my life could be so much more spontaneous! I have more trouble seeing where the 500 seat office for a global enterprise should go on my city block. it seems like that sort of space would lead to a dead feeling at night when everyone goes home and the space sits empty.
    - llampx 8y ago
      Come to Berlin or any other major European metropolis to see how that works out. Plenty of bigger office buildings in the middle of the city where lots of people commute to them with bicycles, public transport and even walking. Right next to apartment buildings with small businesses and restaurants and cafes. Turns out when you don't need to allocate space for 500 cars around a building, you can build it in a single city block and coexist with other types of buildings. And you even get a rooftop with a view as a bonus.
    - razorunreal 8y ago
      Look at big cities around the world and you'll find buildings with retail at the bottom and office space further up. I don't think it would be an issue, unless you stroll around the sky at night.
- ed312 8y ago
  It might also be worth starting to let go of the notion that you need 2000+ sq ft and a 1/4 acre yard as a minimum. Roads are effectively a subsidy to that life style (everyone shouldn't be forced to pay for the life style of a few).
  - User23 8y ago
    I don’t think advocating lower standards of living is good persuasion. Also, roads are observably popular, because people desire to both go places and to have things delivered.
    - praxulus 8y ago
      Spending an hour in traffic each day is not exactly my idea of a high standard of living.
      - User23 8y ago
        Different people are in different life stages and thus have different preferences.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - sbov 8y ago
    I could do without the yard, but I couldn't imagine having much less than what we have now (1962 sq feet). 3 kids (1 a surprise - yay twins for the second pregnancy) plus a home office because I work from home.
    - iso1337 8y ago
      Yes, once you are used to that kind of space, it’s hard to go back. Hedonistic treadmill and all (or some kind of treadmill). People in the 60s had larger families with smaller houses. However, to fulfill our expectations of progress, House sizes in America keep growing decade after decade. I’m fully guilty of this myself too. But like all things it cannot keep growing indefinitely. http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
- CalRobert 8y ago
  And why, exactly, can't they afford to live within biking distance from work? Because 1) You're not allowed to build mixed-use areas thanks to NIMBYs 2) You're not allowed to build high or mid-density areas thanks to NIMBYs 3) You're not allowed to build real bike routes (the kind you'd let your 8 year old cycle to school alone on) because of NIMBYs 4) You could cycle the long distances needed on the road, but the US has made it legal to kill people with your car so long as you're sober, so this is dangerous. Nobody's driving from NYC to LA for their morning commute. The size of the country is not relevant.
  - User23 8y ago
    People in Southern California routinely commute 50 miles. Expecting your groundskeeper to ride a century on top of his actual job is sick and cruel.
    - epistasis 8y ago
      It says a lot more about your worldview than the original poster's that you jump to assuming a 50 mile bike, rather than the simpler notion that people live close to where they work. Is it really so shocking to live that close to a gardener? What is outlandish about that?
      - User23 8y ago
        I specified Southern California. If you’re unfamiliar with the dynamics of the region it makes sense that you think it’s outlandish.
        metildaa 8y ago
        The "dynamics" of SoCal are atrocious, you get the privelege of wasting your life away in traffic to do the simplest things. Public transit is a bad joke too, the light rail in LA waits for cars to pass at intersections! I've never seen that in other metros, as rail always gets signal priority, but it is a great way to drive away riders...
        8y ago
bb88 8y ago
Bike infrastructure can in fact increase congestion. Fivethirtyeight did a study in Minneapolis on bike lanes constructed earlier this decade and showed that bike lanes did increase congestion for 10 roads they looked at. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bike-lanes-dont-cause-traffic-jams-if-youre-smart-about-where-you-build-them/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bike-lanes-dont-cause-t... Anecdotally, the mid sized city I lived in added a bike lane experimentally on my commute to work. The lanes going into the city decreased from 4 to 3 and immediately increased the amount of congestion. It also slowed my commute anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes based upon what time I left. And the sad thing was, nobody used the new bike lane. I never saw a single rider use those lanes during my morning commute.
- StillBored 8y ago
  Sounds like Austin, where the prevailing wisdom is to covert car lanes to bike lanes. Which causes nothing but problems because the couple people a day who use the lanes in no way compensates for the cascading problems as fewer cars can drive through an intersection during a light cycle, which means the cross streets start to pile up/etc.
  - electric_muse 8y ago
    This is happening in New York right now. Massive investment in bike infrastructure. But congestion hasn’t improved at all. Combined with increased ride sharing, NYC roads are now 15% slower. We need solutions for average people, not high brow idealism for people who have fancy bikes and showers at work. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/ride-hailing-new-york-traffic/549131/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/ride-ha...
    - JAlexoid 8y ago
      Average newyorker isn't a driver, dear. Congestion isn't going to go away in NYC. Mostly because New York wasn't built for this much traffic in the first place... And new bike lanes is a welcome sight in NYC. Based on how much CitiBikes move around the city, you can easily determine that those bike lanes are a welcome change. But then... I haven't been to a city with a good motor vehicle infrastructure in a long time. Certainly none of the major US cities are designed well to handle even remotely appropriate levels of private motor vehicle use. PS: I have a car in NYC. Use it for some cases, but would never drive daily in NYC.

User23 8y ago

That works great in countries one can bike across in a day. It’s not really a solution for American commuters. People mainly choose long commutes for housing affordability. When workers can’t afford to live within biking distance of work, then it’s not a viable solution.

mklingen 8y ago
> When workers can’t afford to live within biking distance of work, then it’s not a viable solution. This is a catch 22 because the way our cities are designed in America makes them unaffordable. American zoning in most cities prohibits the kind of dense mixed use development that makes low cost housing near work possible. We need to reform the zoning code in most cities and improve bike safety, walkability and public transportation to make headway.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Lack of mid-distance transit is also a huge problem. Mid-sized USA cities tend to have half decent transit around their urban core (often woefully under-served especially in cities that don't have either trains/subways or else dedicated right-of-way for buses, but none-the-less serviceable). However, the thing that mid-sized cities almost uniformly lack in the US is any form of regional commuter rail.
  - sulam 8y ago
    We have regional commute rail in the SF Bay Area and in the NYC Metropolitan Region. It doesn't seem to have done much except drive up housing prices near rail stations and create silliness like 5-yr waiting lists for parking at them. It seems clear that commuter rail is not a silver bullet. Housing density is probably what we really need.
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      Counter-anecdotes: in Chicago (e.g., UP-N), Boston (e.g., Fitchburg), and much of Europe (e.g., many major cities in Germany), the commuter rail systems do take you out into very affordable areas.
    - llampx 8y ago
      I used to commute into SF from Redwood City with the Caltrain. If I couldn't have taken a bike with me on the train, it would have been impossible because the last mile at both ends was completely undoable with local buses.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      It's both. Rail lets you be more flexible about where to put that density.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  I can easily see that it would improve my quality of life a lot if there were a bunch of customer-facing businesses interspersed with housing in a dense city block. I would love to be able to take a quick five minute walk to grab that random tool I need or that last ingredient I need for a recipe; my life could be so much more spontaneous! I have more trouble seeing where the 500 seat office for a global enterprise should go on my city block. it seems like that sort of space would lead to a dead feeling at night when everyone goes home and the space sits empty.
  - llampx 8y ago
    Come to Berlin or any other major European metropolis to see how that works out. Plenty of bigger office buildings in the middle of the city where lots of people commute to them with bicycles, public transport and even walking. Right next to apartment buildings with small businesses and restaurants and cafes. Turns out when you don't need to allocate space for 500 cars around a building, you can build it in a single city block and coexist with other types of buildings. And you even get a rooftop with a view as a bonus.
  - razorunreal 8y ago
    Look at big cities around the world and you'll find buildings with retail at the bottom and office space further up. I don't think it would be an issue, unless you stroll around the sky at night.
ed312 8y ago
It might also be worth starting to let go of the notion that you need 2000+ sq ft and a 1/4 acre yard as a minimum. Roads are effectively a subsidy to that life style (everyone shouldn't be forced to pay for the life style of a few).
- User23 8y ago
  I don’t think advocating lower standards of living is good persuasion. Also, roads are observably popular, because people desire to both go places and to have things delivered.
  - praxulus 8y ago
    Spending an hour in traffic each day is not exactly my idea of a high standard of living.
    - User23 8y ago
      Different people are in different life stages and thus have different preferences.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sbov 8y ago
  I could do without the yard, but I couldn't imagine having much less than what we have now (1962 sq feet). 3 kids (1 a surprise - yay twins for the second pregnancy) plus a home office because I work from home.
  - iso1337 8y ago
    Yes, once you are used to that kind of space, it’s hard to go back. Hedonistic treadmill and all (or some kind of treadmill). People in the 60s had larger families with smaller houses. However, to fulfill our expectations of progress, House sizes in America keep growing decade after decade. I’m fully guilty of this myself too. But like all things it cannot keep growing indefinitely. http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
CalRobert 8y ago
And why, exactly, can't they afford to live within biking distance from work? Because 1) You're not allowed to build mixed-use areas thanks to NIMBYs 2) You're not allowed to build high or mid-density areas thanks to NIMBYs 3) You're not allowed to build real bike routes (the kind you'd let your 8 year old cycle to school alone on) because of NIMBYs 4) You could cycle the long distances needed on the road, but the US has made it legal to kill people with your car so long as you're sober, so this is dangerous. Nobody's driving from NYC to LA for their morning commute. The size of the country is not relevant.
- User23 8y ago
  People in Southern California routinely commute 50 miles. Expecting your groundskeeper to ride a century on top of his actual job is sick and cruel.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    It says a lot more about your worldview than the original poster's that you jump to assuming a 50 mile bike, rather than the simpler notion that people live close to where they work. Is it really so shocking to live that close to a gardener? What is outlandish about that?
    - User23 8y ago
      I specified Southern California. If you’re unfamiliar with the dynamics of the region it makes sense that you think it’s outlandish.
      - metildaa 8y ago
        The "dynamics" of SoCal are atrocious, you get the privelege of wasting your life away in traffic to do the simplest things. Public transit is a bad joke too, the light rail in LA waits for cars to pass at intersections! I've never seen that in other metros, as rail always gets signal priority, but it is a great way to drive away riders...
      - 8y ago

bb88 8y ago

Bike infrastructure can in fact increase congestion. Fivethirtyeight did a study in Minneapolis on bike lanes constructed earlier this decade and showed that bike lanes did increase congestion for 10 roads they looked at. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bike-lanes-dont-cause-traffic-jams-if-youre-smart-about-where-you-build-them/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bike-lanes-dont-cause-t... Anecdotally, the mid sized city I lived in added a bike lane experimentally on my commute to work. The lanes going into the city decreased from 4 to 3 and immediately increased the amount of congestion. It also slowed my commute anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes based upon what time I left. And the sad thing was, nobody used the new bike lane. I never saw a single rider use those lanes during my morning commute.

StillBored 8y ago
Sounds like Austin, where the prevailing wisdom is to covert car lanes to bike lanes. Which causes nothing but problems because the couple people a day who use the lanes in no way compensates for the cascading problems as fewer cars can drive through an intersection during a light cycle, which means the cross streets start to pile up/etc.
- electric_muse 8y ago
  This is happening in New York right now. Massive investment in bike infrastructure. But congestion hasn’t improved at all. Combined with increased ride sharing, NYC roads are now 15% slower. We need solutions for average people, not high brow idealism for people who have fancy bikes and showers at work. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/ride-hailing-new-york-traffic/549131/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/ride-ha...
  - JAlexoid 8y ago
    Average newyorker isn't a driver, dear. Congestion isn't going to go away in NYC. Mostly because New York wasn't built for this much traffic in the first place... And new bike lanes is a welcome sight in NYC. Based on how much CitiBikes move around the city, you can easily determine that those bike lanes are a welcome change. But then... I haven't been to a city with a good motor vehicle infrastructure in a long time. Certainly none of the major US cities are designed well to handle even remotely appropriate levels of private motor vehicle use. PS: I have a car in NYC. Use it for some cases, but would never drive daily in NYC.